Web Browser Wednesday

Having toolbars in a browser can be both frustrating and convenient. On one hand they can often cram a lot of useful functionality into a small area, but on the other hand they eat up precious space that could be used for viewing websites. After all, we know what your browser can look like when you’ve installed a few too many toolbars.

I’ve managed to find a happy medium by automatically hiding the toolbars so that they only appear when my mouse hovers over any other toolbar (ex. the navigation/address bar), and that’s what we’re going to show you today. First we’ll go ahead and demonstrate how to do this with just the bookmarks toolbar, and then we’ll walk you through the steps needed to apply this to just about any Firefox toolbar such as the Google Toolbar.

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Auto-hide any Firefox Toolbar

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Tutorial Thursday

I’ve always enjoyed listening to Internet radio stations because I don’t have to worry about putting together my own playlists of music. iTunes has a decent selection of these radio stations available, but Apple has full control over what appears in that section of the media player. Fortunately that doesn’t mean you can’t add some of your own favorite radio streams to iTunes.

There are two caveats to the trick I’m about to show you:

• The radio streams that get added to iTunes won’t appear in the Radio section. Instead they’ll be showing up under the Playlist section, which may or may not be something that you want. Personally I like not having to go to the Radio section because it can be time consuming trying to find a particular radio station. This method will give you fast and easy access to your favorite stations.
• In order to add online radio stations to iTunes the stream will need to be available in a playlist (.PLS) format.

This makes Shoutcast a perfect example since they use the PLS format for their radio streams. Here are the needed instructions for setting up one of those streams in iTunes:

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Add Shoutcast Radio Streams to iTunes

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Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
I’ve always felt like there hasn’t been a perfect tool out there for the average person who wants to shoot panoramic shots, and doesn’t want to spend ages assembling them on their machine. One of the last tools that we covered on the site was Hugin, but you could spend hours tweaking settings trying to get things just right. It just wasn’t something the most people would want to fiddle with.

Over in our forum Tony pointed out an amazing tool that Microsoft provides for free called the Image Composite Editor (ICE). Sure Microsoft has already incorporated panoramic creation capabilities in Windows Live Photo Gallery, but having this standalone app gives you a few more features.

I guess the real question is how well does it work, and how much effort will you have to put into stitching your photos together. I tried the program on several different panoramic shots that I’ve taken over the years, and it turned out some of the best results. Ironically enough it’s also one of the easiest programs I’ve ever used for this type of task.

When you first get Microsoft ICE up and running you should see something like this:

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Easily Create Panoramic Shots

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• Yahoo Photos Beta Release Today

Web Browser Wednesday

Google Chrome has taken the browser market by storm ever since its release a few weeks ago. The only complaint that I’ve really heard about the browser is that it doesn’t support add-ons like Firefox does, but Google has already said that a future version will be covering those bases. It’s already been downloaded over 2 million times, and that number is destined to grow very rapidly once developers are able to create add-ons for it.

If you’ve decided to stick it out with Chrome then we’ve got a few tips and tricks for you that we’ve come across over the last few weeks.

–Keyboard Shortcuts–

Keyboard shortcuts can really help make you more productive when using a web browser, and as expected Google Chrome has plenty of them for you to learn. A full list of keyboard shortcuts can be found here, but these are a few handy ones:

• Ctrl+[1-8]: Switches to the tab in that position on your tab bar
• Shift+Esc: Opens the browser’s task manager
• Ctrl+Shift+N: Opens an incognito window that can be used for private browsing

–About Pages–

Google Chrome has several different “about” pages that can be used to access various information. For example, entering about:memory in the address bar will show you a list of running browsers along with how much memory each one is using.

One of the really interesting pages is about:stats that will show you a list of timers and counters used by the browser. It tracks things like how long it takes (in milliseconds) for your browser window to close, the load time of Google Gears, and more. Google OS has a more comprehensive list of the “about” pages available in Google Chrome.

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Google Chrome Tips

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• Microsoft Does Image Search Right with Bing

Fun Friday

And now, a shortened, sweet and condensed Fun Friday! We came across this and couldn’t help but laugh. You’ve gotta love when someone has a sense of humor..

To the person who wrote the message, thanks for your brutal honesty buddy:

Source

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Do Not Touch!

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Time-Saving Tuesday

If you’ve ever attempted to build your own website and your related skill level isn’t very high, you know that it can be a big headache. There are so many things you have to know if you truly want to build your own site from scratch. It’s definitely not something that anybody can do … unless SynthaSite is being used. SynthaSite takes the hassle out of building a website by providing a website builder to you, at no cost. Today for our Time-Saving Tuesday article we’ll be taking a look at how you can save yourself time creating a website of your own, by using SynthaSite.

What is SynthaSite

SynthaSite as mentioned, provides a hassle-free way for just about anybody, even your semi-computer illiterate parent or grandparent, to build a website for free. All you have to do is sign-up for an account and then you’ll be guided through the process of creating a site of your own. SynthaSite uses an AJAX-based editor for the bulk of the site creation process, and the editor is very easy to use.

In no time you’ll have a great looking site, one that you can be proud of, with the help and guidance of SynthaSite.

Creating a Site

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: How To Easily Build Your Own Website

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Tutorial Thursday

So many people have unlimited SMS text messaging plans on their phones these days that a lot of services, such as Twitter, are using them as a way to notify users of updates. By doing this users get a simulated push notification experience without needing to have a push-compatible device.

The good news is that you can also use this type of system for emails, well, assuming your email service supports forwarding (such as Gmail). That’s because most cellphone carriers provide an email address that can be given out, and when an email is received they’ll convert it to a text message which is then sent to your device. We’ve got a list of common carriers that support this towards the end of the article.

Why is this so great? I’m a Gmail user that owns an iPhone, and instead of having my phone go out and check for new emails every 15 to 60 minutes I can just get a text message. If you’ve got an unlimited text message plan with your carrier you’ll likely enjoy the convenience of getting instant notifications of emails.

Setting it up is fairly easy as long as your email service supports forwarding. Since Gmail offers this feature for free we’re going to use that in our example…

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: “Push” Email Using SMS Text Messages

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Time Saving Tuesday

Windows; Mac
Finding a good alarm clock to help get you up in the wee hours of the morning can be tough. I have a tendency of placing the clock out of arms reach so that I have to get out of bed in order to turn it off. What I use as an alarm varies from things like my cellphone or TV all the way to my computer.

For some odd reason it seems as though free alarm clocks for computers are tough to come by these days. A few years ago we covered a decent alarm clock called Citrus that offered a lot of the functionality people would expect, and the best part was that it was free. Unfortunately the freeware stage didn’t last long, and it’s now a $13 program. Similarly Aurora for Mac used to be free, but it now bears a $22 price tag.

So today we’re showing our appreciation to the developers who’ve taken the time to build powerful alarm clock applications, and are currently offering them for free!

–College Alarm Clock (Homepage)–

Windows only
This alarm clock is particularly useful for people that have different schedules each day of the week, and as the name implies the target audience is college students. Using it is simple: download and run the program… there’s nothing to install. After that you can start tinkering around with the different configuration options.

You’ll quickly notice that there are 7 tabs spread out across the top for each day of the week. For each day you can designate a different time that coincides with your schedule, which for college students works out perfectly. It doesn’t exactly have a fancy interface, but it can be rather handy if your schedule varies throughout the week.

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Free Alarm Clocks for Windows & Mac

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Weekend Website

Over the last couple of years, Remember the Milk has done a great job of making a name for themselves. We wrote about them for the first time almost exactly two years ago and described them as a free, simple task manager. At that point they were still in beta and even then they had come a long way. As they approach their three year anniversary which is coming up in October, we thought we’d take another look at the service which has made a big difference in how people manage their task lists.

Remember the Milk has a whole list of official services which you can view here. Those services range from Remember the Milk (RtM) for Twitter to a Mobile Version which makes for easy management of your tasks on the go. Today we’ll be covering four official RtM services available including the Mobile Version, RtM for Netvibes, Gmail, and Twitter.

Mobile Version

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Services Offered By Remember the Milk

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Fun Friday

Earlier this week I received a forwarded email that was titled “Budget Cuts.” Upon opening it, there were a handful of pictures depicting an office cubicle made almost entirely out of cardboard. After looking at the images with one including a note reading “You R No Prank King”, it was clear that someone had created a cardboard cubicle as a prank, and what a funny and time-consuming prank it must have been. Once you see the pictures, you’ll understand what I mean.

This gave me the idea to put together a list of the best office pranks I could find. I’m sure we have some pranksters among us, so feel free to share the best prank you’ve pulled on someone in the comments below.

Happy Friday!

Cardboard Cubicle (click to enlarge)

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Humorous Office Pranks and Practical Jokes

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Tutorial Thursday

Windows only
File sharing is becoming more and more important these days, and that’s one reason why I’m always looking for easy ways to upload images and files. A recent program I came across called Rightload looks to remove the hassle of uploading files to common sites, or even to your own FTP.

With it you can right-click on a file or folder, and then have it upload the selected files to a service or FTP server of your choice. Before you can do any of that you’ll need to set up the program to work with those services.

The screenshot above shows what Rightload looks like after starting it up for the first time. Below you’ll find instructions needed to set up an FTP account or a few select web services (Imageshack, TinyPic, Rapidshare, etc…), and then also a brief tutorial on how the program works.

–Set up Your Accounts–

To set up one of your own FTP servers you’ll want to go to Tools -> Manage Servers, and press the New Server button. Now all you have left to do is enter in the details for your FTP account, including the default directory you want the files uploaded into.

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Fast Uploads to FTP, Imageshack, TinyPic, and Rapidshare

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Web Browser Wednesday

According to Alexa Wikipedia is the 7th most visited site in the world only to follow behind companies like Google and Yahoo. Seeing that they receive millions of visitors each day it should come as no surprise that people would use the tools at hand to make their own customized layouts and designs for the site.

Below we’ve listed out our top 10 Wikipedia themes that are specifically designed for Firefox users who have the Stylish extension installed. We’ve tested out each of the styles to make sure they work as advertised, and for each of the screenshots the Firefox Wikipedia page was used. That way you’re able to quickly compare one style to another in order to determine which one you like best. When all is said and done we’ll tell you what our three favorites are (one from each category).

Here’s a quick look at what the Wikipedia page looks like before any modifications have been made.

Note: Click on any of the screenshots to see a larger version.

–Dark Themes–

If you like dark skins here are four Wikipedia themes that you’ll definitely want to consider.

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Top 10 Wikipedia Themes for Stylish Users

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Time Saving Tuesday

Win; Mac; Linux
One of the things that’s always nice to know is what you can remove from your hard drive to quickly regain hard drive space. Maybe there are some enormous games on your computer that you don’t play anymore, or files you’ve downloaded that have never gotten deleted? By using hard drive visualization tools you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what is eating up your hard drive storage.

There are a lot of different programs that can be used for this purpose, and we thought it would be better to put together a more comprehensive list instead of just covering one or two of our favorites. We’ve broken them up according to operating system below, and for each one we provide a brief description accompanied by a screenshot. That way you’ll be able to figure out which free app is right for you.

Note: You can click on a screenshot for a full-size version.

–Windows Hard Drive Visualization–

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Disk Usage & Hard Drive Visualization

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Microsoft/Mac Monday

Several months ago for one of our CyberNotes, we talked about Vista’s Parental Controls and how it’s one of Vista’s shining points. It gives parents control over nearly every aspect of their child’s computer use. Parental Controls help parents do their job of protecting their children from harm while allowing them to experience all that a computer can offer. Since we have already covered Vista’s parental controls, we thought we should take a look at the parental controls that are offered if you are using Mac OS X.

How to enable Parental Controls

1. Open System Preferences
2. Under “System” click Parental Controls
3. Choose the accounts you would like to attach parental controls to
4. Begin configuring the options

Manage Parental Controls from another Computer

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Parental Controls on Mac OS X

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Sunday’s Summary

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

• Monday: If We Could Port Over Our Favorite Applications…
• Tuesday: Performance-Friendly Desktop Search Applications
• Wednesday: Best Experimental Firefox Extensions
• Thursday: Create Free iPhone Ringtones Using iTunes in Windows
• Friday: Murphy’s Laws of Technology
• Saturday: Grooveshark Lite – A Pandora/Last.fm Combo

• Tab Popup – See the contents of a tab without having to click on it.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

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Weekend Website

It’s always interesting to see how many companies are up for the challenge of making a name for themselves in the online music industry. There are plenty of them with different business models and varying services, but the common ground among them are that they use the Internet to provide a way for people to listen to music. A fairly new service that we discovered thanks to Mashable is called Grooveshark Lite, made by Grooveshark.com (their peer-to-peer model) which some of you may be familiar with.

Today we’ll be taking at what Grooveshark Lite is all about.

What is Grooveshark?

Grooveshark Lite looks promising after testing it out. One thing that stood out was the interface – it simply looks good. But a site just can’t look good, it has to offer value to users as well. Grooveshark does this by offering a nice selection of music for users to stream from the Grooveshark library. You can search for your favorite artists, create playlists, get recommendations, and save songs you enjoy to a favorites list. It also has a social aspect as well by giving users the option to share songs with friends.

Mashable helps describe the service by saying, “If Pandora had a love child with Last.fm, it’s name would be Grooveshark Lite.” If you are familiar with Pandora, and you are familiar with Last.fm, you will have a decent idea as to what Grooveshark Lite offers.

Autoplay

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Grooveshark Lite – A Pandora/Last.fm Combo

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Fun Friday

You’ve heard of Murphy’s law before, I’m sure – “If anything can go wrong, it will” or “whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.” Since Murphy’s Law came about a long time ago, there have been all kinds of variations to it. A site found at murphys-laws.com has lots of those variations available that pertain to certain categories like real estate, teaching, and technology. There were all kinds of Murphys Laws that pertained to technology, so we sifted through them and found the ones we liked the best, which you’ll find below.

Be sure to visit the Murphy’s Laws Site to checkout the complete list!

1. Technology is…

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

2. The attention span of…

The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord.

3. A failure will not appear…

A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.

4. New Systems…

New systems generate new problems.

5. To err is human…

To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer.

6. The primary function…

The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.

7. Any circuit design…

Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.

8. A complex system…

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

9. Computers are…

Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

10. Build a system…

Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.

11. If something breaks…

If something breaks and it stops you from doing something, it will be fixed when you:

- no longer need it

- are in the middle of something else

- don’t want it to be fixed because you really don’t want to do what you were supposed to do

12. It is never wise…

It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you are in a hurry.

13. Don’t fix something…

Don’t fix something that ain’t broke, ’cause you’ll break it and you still won’t be able to fix it.

14. When it comes to software…

When it comes to software, the moment you read software reviews and manage to master it, a new version of the software is released/

15. In today’s fast-moving tech environment…

In today’s fast moving tech environment, it is a requirement that we forget more than we learn.

16. A working program…

A working program is one that has only unobserved bugs.

17. A hardware failure…

A hardware failure will cause system software to crash, and the engineer will blame the programmer.

18. A system software crash…

A software crash will cause hardware to act strangely and the programmers will blame the engineer.

19. Profanity…

Profanity is one language all computer users know.

20. Whenever you need a crucial file…

Whenever you need a crucial file from your hard drive, your hard drive will crash…

Image Source

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Murphy’s Laws of Technology

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Tutorial Thursday

Windows; Mac
One of the things that Apple hasn’t made easy for iPhone owners is providing a way to create custom ringtones in Windows. If you’re a Mac owner you can use GarageBand, but Apple doesn’t provide that application on Windows. Instead what they expect you to do is purchase a song for $0.99, and then convert it to a ringtone for another $0.99.

As it turns out in a few steps you can actually convert a DRM-free song into a ringtone using only iTunes in Windows. The trick also works for Mac users, but using GarageBand is a lot simpler so we’re focusing primarily on the Windows side.

Here’s what you need to do:

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Create Free iPhone Ringtones Using iTunes in Windows

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Web Browser Wednesday

Before a Firefox extension has a chance to become unbelievably popular it has to go through an experimental phase to make sure it’s worthy of being added to Mozilla’s extension site. This process can sometimes take months, and so today we wanted to show you some of the best experimental Firefox extensions that you probably don’t know about.

Since each of these extensions are still in the experimental phase you’ll need to have a free Mozilla account before being able to download them. Believe me though, there are some handy add-ons here that are worth going through the extra hassle.

P.S. If you get a “file hash” error message when trying to download any of the extensions checkout this guide on tips to solve the problem.

–MyBookmarks (Homepage)–

MyBookmarks creates a homepage out of all the bookmarks located in your Bookmarks Menu. Just type about:mybookmarks into the address bar, and it will traverse through your folders grabbing each bookmark displaying the results on a central page. It also sticks each site’s icon next to the results making it easy to find your favorite sites.

The color scheme might not appeal to everyone, but that’s not a problem. Just pull up the options, and using a little CSS magic you can customize the look of the entire page. Additional information on skinning the MyBookmarks can be found here.

–Get File Size (Homepage)–

How many times have you wondered how big a file is before you start downloading it? With this extension you just right-click on the URL of the file, select the option to get the file size, and then you’ll receive a popup letting you know just how big the download is.

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Best Experimental Firefox Extensions

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Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
Searching for files on your computer was something that was once a tedious process, but in the last few years it has been one of the most talked about features in new operating systems. Sure you could always search for files on your computer, but do you remember when you’d have to sit there for several minutes while the computer scavenged everything on the hard drive looking for files and folders matching your search.

The benefit that search applications have these days is that they can index files on your computer so that search results are retrieved nearly instantaneously. Mac OS X 10.4 started doing this back in 2005 when Tiger it was released, and Vista followed it up with its own indexed search capabilities. Making search a strong focus of the operating system is a smart thing to do as it becomes harder and harder for users to find the files they are looking for. Without being able to search it can almost be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

What about the other operating systems like XP? Many of you have probably turned to Google Desktop or Copernic to do your searching, but I believe both of those programs use more resources than they need to. They’re constantly monitoring and indexing results on your computer, and Google Desktop even comes bundled with their own gadget/widget system.

Today we’re going to take a look at two excellent applications that focus on quickly searching for files on your computer without the unnecessary bloat. Both of them are free, use very little memory, and aren’t constantly indexing files on your computer… although they do use an index/database for retrieving results. Sound nice?

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Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox
CyberNotes: Performance-Friendly Desktop Search Applications

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